I have come to realize that when I am faced with troubling issues within my life I struggle with confronting those issues appropriately and successfully. I can think of many trying times I have yet to confront and accept. Like any human, I push the negative away and I try to hide or run away from the obstacle at hand. If I could just close my eyes and pretend it was not there, or put myself anywhere but that place and time I would, but I know it is not right, nor beneficial in any way.
For twenty three years of my life I have neglected to even try to understand my past. When presented with the opportunity to write my autobiography last year I felt overwhelmed and intimidated. I had never had to ask my mother and father about their divorce, I had never dreamed of sitting down with my father and asking him questions about it. Until this past year I had no idea that my mother was remarried to my stepfather two weeks after her and my father’s divorce was final. I have never tried to understand, I have never wanted to know because I am afraid to know. I have let this build up inside of me for twenty three years, all the way it has been affecting me in so many ways, yet I chose to hide from it.
When I think about my “spiritual journey”, all I come up with are empty thoughts. I have never tried to be a better person, or be closer to God. I tell myself the reason is because I feel like I am not educated enough to know one way or another, but I have never tried to be educated. I am afraid to try, this whole while I am being eaten alive by an emptiness and hollowness. I can see and feel myself breaking down day after day, and year after year. This is a part of myself I cannot say I am proud of, but I won’t say I am ashamed of. I have just learned to ignore the real emotions and feelings lingering inside me. I feel like I have disguised who I really am from myself.
It is a realization I have recently come to terms with about myself. This is a part of who I am. It is just a piece of my story. Through me sharing my story in my artwork I hope that I can not only learn more about myself, but that my viewers will be motivated and inspired to confront themselves and try to understand who they are.
When I take the pressed clay out of the mold that was directly applied to my face and body, I am confronting myself. That is who I really am, all these years I have never tried to understand. In my series of self-portraits I want to show the progression of my “breakdown”, the reality of the seriousness in dealing with these issues, and how it could affect me in the future if I continue to run away. It has been a slow deterioration, each stage carrying more weight and eating more away than the last. It feels like a mold growing and vigorously spreading, eating away my surface to my core. Each piece presented will represent a stage of my breakdown. Each piece will represent less and less of who I actually am as the deterioration progresses. As for the way I treat the surface of each piece, it may vary piece to piece, I will not use any glaze to prevent distractions. I am fond of the idea of pit firing each piece. The effect from the pit fire on the clay almost represents a spreading across the surface from one shade to the next. It has a darkness to it that captures a serious emotion necessary to this series of self-portraits.
